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Category

Football Blog

Had a great response to the launch of our Premier Lague 2012 Report. It's a massive development from the propotype, thanks to a great effort from the whole BTBS team, and a particular thanks to Alastair. We have added an intensive analysis of the Financial Fair Play rules, including how clubs might get round the rules, which clubs pass the tests (only 4 Premier League clubs pass all the tests in our simulation, so goodness knows how long it will take UEFA to go through this process), and...

I am delighted that I have been invited to speak at the prestigious CLSA Investor Forum in Hong Kong, September 23-27, 2013. It was always one of my favourite events when I was a fund manager, often eye-opening and always thought-provoking. I witnessed some awesome presentations there.

President Clinton was the most amazing and charismatic personality; you knew that he was in the hotel lobby even if you could not see him; Sir Bob Geldof inspired me to want to invest in Africa, speaking...

Google searches on football clubs

We thought it might be a good gauge of popularity to assess the frequency of searches on google for some of the top clubs - the answers are slightly surprising, we think. Check out the charts below, which compare the global search frequency of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool:

Manchester United is massively more popular on this basis than any of the other big clubs, indeed than all the other three put together. This is partly...

Manchester United shares have fallen over 5% since Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement. They are still trading on over 25x next year's earnings, which some would say is justified given the earnings visibility. Current year EV/EBITDA is over 20x, which even the bulls would admit is harder to justify, given that the balance sheet debt has been reduced by massive levels of sponsor payments in advance in addition to the natural season ticket "float".

Manchester United shares floated on the London Stock Exchange in May 1991 when the company had a market capitalisation of £47m. Today their value (quoted in New York) is nearer £2bn - Apple may have grown nearly twice as fast, but few others can match this record.

How much of this is down to Alex Ferguson? He has clearly has been the most successful club manager ever, and he has certainly been a brilliant steward of Manchester United’s resources, of late often constrained by the Glazer’s...